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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27295456">Family, Found</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/FidotheFinch/pseuds/FidotheFinch'>FidotheFinch</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Whumptober [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Blood, Burning, Cults, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Left for Dead, Murder, Suicide mentions, Unhappy Ending, Whumptober</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:33:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,808</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27295456</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/FidotheFinch/pseuds/FidotheFinch</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“It was a trap.”</p><p>The words made Dick pause, hands stilling where he had been trying to flip them over. “It was—” he tasted the words, rolling them around in his head. Jason gave him the time to catch up.</p><p>“It was a trap,” he agreed. The words were like ashes on his tongue. He redoubled his efforts to get out of the chair.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dick Grayson &amp; Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson &amp; Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson &amp; Jason Todd</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Whumptober [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947544</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>118</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Family, Found</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello wonderful readers! This is for Whumptober 2020 Day 31: left for dead. </p><p>This one is dark. Dead Dove: Do Not Eat is a tag I never thought I would find myself using, but then I had competition (and several ENABLERS (you know who you are)) in the discord server and I had to make all of my friends hurt as much as they hurt me. (That said: seriously. This is dark. Take care of yourself! &lt;3)</p><p>Warnings: MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH (explicit), cults, unhappy ending, murder, blood, nonconsensual drug use, asphyxiation, mass suicide (mentioned), suicide (explicit; not a main character), burning, the cult targets adopted people specifically, vomiting, bloodletting, amputation, seizures, blindfolds, nonconsensual restraints, briefly mentioned amputation, corpses, kidnapping victims</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The door opened with a terrible screech, the dry metal hinges squealing against their frame as the heavy metal was levered open. Dick raced inside, past Red Hood. “Cover the door,” he huffed, still slightly out of breath from the fight earlier.</p><p>He heard a gruff affirmative from behind him when Damian called, “Nightwing?”</p><p>“Robin,” Dick breathed. They had finally found him.</p><p>It was less a room they had found than a cave, dug into the side of a mountain. A row of torches along the back wall illuminated the stone table in the corner, crusted with what looked like dried blood, and several wooden chairs.</p><p>In one of them sat their missing bird. Damian had been stripped down to just his leggings, and there was a thin sheen of sweat on his skin from the torches’ heat.</p><p>Dick rushed forward, mentally cataloging the knot on Damian’s forehead that was still weeping blood before he reached him. The rope tying his wrists to the chair was already half-gnawed through, but a clean swipe with a wingding and it fell away completely. “Do you think you can walk?” he asked.</p><p>Damian tutted in answer, and was already working on loosening the ropes around his ankles. “Of course.”</p><p>Dick wouldn’t have accepted that as an answer normally, but he knew from the source himself that Damian had survived longer than two days without food or water before. “We have to be fast.” Dick knelt and sliced through the ropes around Damian’s ankles, too. “There are more on their way.”</p><p>Damian swayed as he stood, but when Dick offered a hand he brushed it off and steadied himself. “What do you mean, <em>more</em>?”</p><p>A red helmet poked inside the doorway. “Did you know that, ninety-nine percent of the time, cults have more than six members?”</p><p>“This isn’t a cult,” Damian argued. “They aren’t organized enough.”</p><p>Dick passed him a handful of wingdings. They were similar enough to the batarangs; Robin would know how to use them effectively. It didn’t look like he had any other weapons on him, and they didn’t have time to go searching the cave system for them.</p><p>“You know what? We’ll leave you here, then.” Jason moved forward, letting the door fall shut a few inches, and tilted his head over his shoulder. “Come on, Nightwing, apparently it was a false alarm.”</p><p>Robin rolled his eyes and scowled, but Dick knew enough to see the worry in the thin line of his mouth. He set a hand on his shoulder. “We’re not leaving you,” he promised.</p><p>Damian shook his hand off—eyes flicking to Jason and back—and opened his mouth to say something, but it was lost under a loud hiss.</p><p>“Gas!” was all the warning they got from Jason. He fired a few shots out the door, but it was too late. A handful of canisters ricocheted into the room, spewing a white cloud of acrid chemicals.</p><p>Dick got his rebreather in place in time to watch Jason shudder and fall to the floor. He couldn’t make out what had hit him through the quickly-thickening fog, but he didn’t have time to worry about it. The heavy door was shutting. He leapt forward, barely managing to slip around it in time to keep Jason’s torso from getting squished. He grunted, pushing back on the door, and slowly made progress.</p><p>A choked coughing sound came from behind him.</p><p>Damian didn’t have a rebreather.</p><p>Dick craned his neck around to find Robin kneeling, his entire frame wracked with the effort of breathing through the smoke. He looked up with watery eyes and flicked his hand in a way that was probably supposed to be dismissive. “I’m coming,” he rasped.</p><p>Dick squared his shoulders. He had made a promise. “No.” He heaved backward, gaining precious few inches on the door, and wedged his escrima in the hinges before it could fall shut again. They creaked with the pressure, but the door held.</p><p>As soon as he could confirm they wouldn’t get trapped, Dick raced to Damian’s side and scooped him up, weaving him over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. The kid was already unconscious by the time he got him off the floor.</p><p>“Red Hood!” he called.</p><p>The larger man grunted from somewhere within the cloud, his helmet doing its job and filtering out the worse of the gas.</p><p>“Up! Let’s go!” He fought his way closer blindly, but when he got there he found the floor empty.</p><p>Dick froze.</p><p>Four men, cloaked in scarlet, blocked the narrow cavern leading out of the cave system. Jason stood with them, and in the fog it took a moment for Dick to identify why: a long string of wire was wrapped around Jason’s neck.</p><p>The man holding the wire jerked his hands, pulling the wire tighter. Jason’s responding gargle was odd through the voice modulator in his helmet. “Set the child down,” the man ordered. He was clearly unaffected by the gas, and his slightly-muffled voice told Dick why.</p><p>Dick’s hands tightened around Damian’s legs. The kid had already been there two days. He wouldn’t leave him there again. “No.”</p><p>The wire was pulled tight, enough to draw blood. Jason’s gloved hands scrabbled at it, but it was pulled too tight for him to find purchase. “Remove your breathing filtration system, or we will kill him.”</p><p>Dick tensed, ready to fight his way through. They could come back for Jason; they knew where they kept their victims, now. But the wire cut tighter, and Jason made a horrible <em>gargling </em>noise. And underneath it, the sound of more people approaching the cave.</p><p>Dick was outnumbered.</p><p>He waited as long as he dared, eyes scanning the narrow hallway for options.</p><p>He had none.</p><p>He removed his rebreather slowly, and he could already feel the effects of the drug with his first breath.</p><p>The man released Jason, who fell to his knees and gasped. The others rushed past him, toward Dick. One of them slipped Damian off his shoulders.</p><p>Two more caught him has he fell unconscious.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>When Dick woke up, he had to fight the urge to let himself fall back asleep. His eyes and limbs were still heavy with exhaustion and whatever drug had forced him unconscious. He couldn’t resist letting his eyes fall shut again, but he managed to hold on to his consciousness. He needed to figure out where he was.</p><p>The smell hit him, first. Dark, musty. Mildew? Like dirt, but colder. It was a smell not dissimilar to the Cave’s, but it was too quiet here to be that.</p><p>Underneath it all was the undercurrent of stale blood.</p><p>That convinced him to open his eyes. And he didn’t like what he found.</p><p>He was in the same room they had found Robin in, except the torches had burned down to embers. They let off enough heat to make up for the fact he had been stripped of the top half of his suit, and cast an eerie orange glow over the rest of the room. It was enough light for him to make out the cave walls, the shadowy shape of the stone table in the corner, the dark vent that released the smoke, and the other figures in the room with him.</p><p>The smallest one, sitting in a wooden chair across from him, shifted, and Dick whispered, “Robin?”</p><p>Damian didn’t respond, but it was clear he was still in the process of waking up from whatever had drugged them.</p><p>“’Wing,” came a groan from behind him.</p><p>Dick trick to twist in his chair to find Jason, but he was restrained too tightly to the chair. “Red Hood?” he asked. He winced when, a moment later, the clear sound of vomiting reached him. It splattered on the floor, and that told Dick Jason wasn’t wearing his helmet anymore. “You good?”</p><p>“Shut up,” Jason slurred. “Think I swallowed blood.”</p><p>Dick hummed in acknowledgement, mind more alert now. He started tugging at his bonds, squinting in the dim light to find where the knots were. But there weren’t knots, and with the first tug Dick realized it wouldn’t be easy to slip these restraints. It was wire, wrapped around his wrists, arms, and chest so tightly it was beginning to cut off circulation to his extremities.</p><p>“This isn’t good,” he mused.</p><p>He got a sarcastic huff in response. “Ya think?”</p><p>Dick experimented with moving his legs. They were wired to the lets of the chair, around his ankles and under his knees. “They’re thorough.”</p><p>“They’ve been doing this for months.” Jason’s voice was grave. “All of those missing people.”</p><p>“No,” Dick cut him off. “They used rope on D—Robin.”</p><p>There was quiet, and Dick wished he could turn around enough to see Jason’s face. “Red?”</p><p>“It was a trap.”</p><p>The words made Dick pause, hands stilling where he had been trying to flip them over. “It was—” he tasted the words, rolling them around in his head. Jason gave him the time to catch up.</p><p>It was an unfortunate truth that people went missing all the time in Gotham. The Bats had helped change the statistic with regular patrols and careful combing of the city, but even their diligence wasn’t always enough. They hadn’t found the pattern in disappearances until the police notified Batman of a pattern in unidentified corpses.</p><p>They hadn’t been able to ID them. They had all been burned.</p><p>The warm torches in the room seemed much more sinister, now. Dick swallowed. The pattern in the disappearing victims, once they had managed to identify the handful they could?</p><p>They had been siblings. <em>Adopted</em> siblings.</p><p>“They couldn’t know,” Dick argued. “We’d be easier to capture as civilians.”</p><p>“Think about it, <em>dick</em>,” Jason said. From the creaking that followed, Dick could guess he was also trying to break his bonds. “How many times has somebody tried to nab you in the last year? How often have you felt watched in the last few months?”</p><p>Dick was always paranoid, these days. But Jason’s words rang true; the last few months had been especially bad. “That doesn’t mean—”</p><p>“I’m not talking about as a civilian.”</p><p>“What is that supposed to mean?”</p><p>“You blab. The brat talks. None of us is as good at compartmentalizing as B. All it would take is one overheard conversation.”</p><p>And, okay. Maybe Dick could see what Jason meant. He thought back to the last few weeks of patrol, when he had forced Damian into a hug “because that’s what big brothers are for.” When Jason had trapped Tim in a headlock. When Damian and Tim had poured glitter into Jason’s helmet. When all three of them had left Dick behind to pay the tab on their milkshake break, even though <em>they </em>were the ones living off Bruce’s money.</p><p>It wasn’t too hard to draw that conclusion.</p><p>“It was a trap,” he agreed. The words were like ashes on his tongue. He redoubled his efforts to get out of the chair.</p><p>Damian groaned, choosing perfect timing to regain consciousness.</p><p>“Robin,” Dick called, softly, to hide his panic. “You back with us?”</p><p>Damian rightened his head, and his nostrils flared. “I am awake.” He looked around, slowly, and Dick guessed it was because of the awkward angle his neck had been resting at before. “We are still here.”</p><p>His tone was flat, but there was no mistaking the anxiety in his posture.</p><p>“Are you okay?” Dick asked. He longed to reach out, hold Damian, assure him it would be okay. “We’re already working on our escape.”</p><p>Damian tutted, but even that sounded unconfident. “Batman will find us.”</p><p>Nightwing stiffened.</p><p>Damian didn’t know.</p><p>At the silence that followed, Damian lifted his chin more. “What is it?”</p><p>The words stuck in Dick’s throat. It was Jason who answered, “Don’t hold your breath, kid,” in a soft voice that contrasted with the harsh words.</p><p>Damian’s fingers curled into fists. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“Batman’s not going to find us,” Jason said.</p><p>At the same time, Dick blurted, “He’s still off-world.”</p><p>There was a pause, Damian digesting the words. Predictably, he looked to Jason, first. “Where are we?”</p><p>“About half a mile underground, in a cave system under the harbor.”</p><p>“We’re still in Gotham,” Dick clarified. “We all have trackers.”</p><p>Fabric rustled; Jason shaking his head. “No signal. We couldn’t find Robin, either.”</p><p>Damian was losing color in his face, but his expression didn’t belie his fear. “But you did find me. If you <em>buffoons </em>could find me, Batman will find me when he returns.”</p><p>Dick bit his tongue until he tasted blood. But Jason didn’t say anything; this fell to him. “We didn’t find you,” he admitted.</p><p>“What do you mean?”</p><p>“We searched for days. But we only found this place because we followed a suspicious shipment of food. It was coincidence.”</p><p>Damian’s voice got quieter. “Batman could—”</p><p>“It was enough food to last months,” Jason countered. “It’s not happening again.”</p><p>Damian was quiet. Stock-still, and for a horrifying moment Dick imagined him as dead. “Robin?” he prompted.</p><p>It still took another moment for Damian to collect himself. “I have not eaten since my arrival. Or had anything to drink. They have not offered it.”</p><p>“We’re fucked,” Jason concluded.</p><p>“<em>No</em>.” Dick took a deep breath. They couldn’t afford to think like that right now. “Red Robin will be back in town tomorrow. He’ll look for us.” He hardened his voice, along with his resolve. “We’ll get out of this.”</p><p>He couldn’t see Jason’s face, but the scoff was telling enough. “Been there, done that.”</p><p>Dick hoped Jason wouldn’t be proven right.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Dick guessed it was two days later that the doors opened again. The sweep of fresh air it brought with it was a relief; the room smelled of blood and urine and sweat and smoke. The torches had long burned out, leaving them in a suffocating darkness.</p><p>So it was through squinting eyes that Dick watched the door open. “Red Robin?” he asked.</p><p>The light that shone through the cracks flickered. More torches.</p><p>Jason and Damian both cursed softly, in different languages. If it were in any other situation, Dick would have reprimanded them. Or thought it was sweet.</p><p>He added some of his own favorites to the mix as cloaked figures poured into the room. They surrounded them on every side, a forest of red cloaks that Dick tried to crane his neck to see around.</p><p>Two came to wait over either of his shoulders, hands clamping down in warning. He could see the same thing happening to Damian, and tensed when he realized they were being watched for a reaction.</p><p>Something was dragged through the hallway outside, and through the door. Two cloaked men, each bent under a heavy load that dragged beneath them. It wasn’t until they passed in front of Dick that he realized it was a person.</p><p>Dick lunged forward, despite the way the wires bit into his skin. “Red Robin!”</p><p>The men dropped him, and he fell heavily into a crumpled heap. He didn’t even twitch.</p><p>Dick scanned him for injuries. It was hard, from this angle: he couldn’t get a goof view of his head or his eyes. But he only spotted a few darkening bruises on his jaw, and what looked like it may have been a broken finger. Not good; not terrible, either.</p><p>But something felt off.</p><p>Damian, across the room, whispered, “Rich—Nightwing.”</p><p>Dick’s eyes strayed to Tim’s chest.</p><p>It wasn’t moving.</p><p>His heart stuttered in his chest. He may have gasped. He had to be imagining it. The movement had to be too small in the torchlight. “TIM!”</p><p>Damian, across the room, didn’t look up from the spot where Tim lay. “He is. . . “ Dick couldn’t see Tim’s head from this angle. Damian, apparently, could. “His eyes are still open,” he said, in a weak voice.</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em>,” Jason whispered, behind him.</p><p>“The kill is still fresh,” one of the cloaked figures said, raising his hands. The words sent cold chills down Dick’s spine. “Commence the ceremony.”</p><p>Several people rushed toward Tim’s body.</p><p>“No!” Jason shouted. His chair rocked against the floor, and Dick was certain he would have tipped over would it not have been for the men keeping guard. “You don’t touch him, you bastards!”</p><p>Dick twisted his wrists in the wire helplessly. Fresh beads of blood rose up and spilled down his wrists. “There’s still a chance—” he argued, but he couldn’t stop them from hauling Tim up to their shoulders. His head, unsupported, hung too far back. The break in his neck was obvious, now.</p><p>The world went numb.</p><p>Dick couldn’t pull his eyes away from the horrifying sight. Tim’s skin had already been too pale; now it was grey around the edges. His domino had been half-ripped from his face, and the exposed eye was still open, cloudy and unfocused in the torchlight.</p><p>Dick fell into silence. He couldn’t process. . . this couldn’t be happening. The cloaked figures carried Tim—Tim’s <em>body </em>over to the stone table on the dais. The lit torches were passed forward, to better illuminate his form where they arranged it in a peaceful facsimile of sleep.</p><p>Sound came back to him slowly, like someone was raising the volume click by click. Jason, behind him, was still shouting.</p><p>Damian was too quiet. Dick couldn’t see him through the thick crowd of people.</p><p>“Blood of the brother,” someone called. And like what was happening was normal, the rest of the room joined in:</p><p>
  <em>And water of the womb<br/>
We offer this sacrifice<br/>
To be spared the tomb</em>
</p><p>The words washed over him faster than he could comprehend. He was too focused on Tim’s body, searching for. . . a sign. Tim was clever. This had to be a ruse.</p><p>
  <em>That our covenant with our sibling be bound<br/>
In the name of our sacred family, found</em>
</p><p>The chanting stopped, and the man standing next to the dais produced a knife from his sleeve.</p><p>“No.” Dick’s world narrowed down to that point.</p><p>With practiced efficiency, the man slit Tim’s throat.</p><p>“No!” A dark, hopeless feeling settled in Dick’s gut as blood sprayed out of the open wound. It soaked through Tim’s uniform. Pooled beneath his body, catching in the little carvings in the stone. Within another minute, it dripped off the table.</p><p>Dick didn’t realize how hard he was pulling against his restraints until a searing pain shot up his arm. When he looked down, wire had sliced cleanly, deeply, into his skin. It wasn’t enough of a pain to even process.  </p><p>The tangy smell of iron filled the cavern, so thick Dick could <em>taste </em>it. It clogged his throat. “Stop,” he begged.</p><p>It wouldn’t do any good.</p><p>The leader, standing by the dais, gestured to somebody in the crowd. “Step forward.”</p><p>A woman, hood pushed back so Dick could see her face, stepped forward from the crowd. She was pale, not just in skin tone. But her eyes scrunched in determination, as she took her place next to the table and turned back toward the crowd. “Family, I offer you this sacrifice, as a representation of my own cleansing.” She raised her torch high, grip firm around its base. “So that I may become your new sister.”</p><p>She lowered her torch toward Tim’s body.</p><p>“No!” Dick yelled. Jason shouted again. Or maybe he had never stopped.</p><p>A burlap bag was lowered over Dick’s head from behind. It wasn’t fast enough. Dick saw the first lick of flame catch in Tim’s hair before his vision was stolen from him.</p><p>He had to have imagined the flicker of movement in Tim’s fingers.</p><p>Tim was dead.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>They didn’t relight the torches on the walls before they left. Dick knew, because when the cult members left, they took all of the heat with them. But there was still flickering light coming from somewhere in the room, and he couldn’t think about Tim’s body, left in cinders on the table.</p><p>Tim had twitched.</p><p>No, it had been a trick of the light. Fire flickered. Or it had been a trick of Dick’s mind, trying to compensate for the awful stillness.</p><p>The smell of singed hair. Melted Kevlar.</p><p>Barbeque.</p><p>If Dick’s head weren’t covered, he would puke.</p><p>“Dick,” asked a quiet, muffled voice.</p><p>Dick latched onto it. “I’m here.”</p><p>Damian had been quiet since the chanting had started. Dick pulled his mind away from the horrors of his imagination and back into the present. Damian didn’t handle trauma well, even if he thought he did. Dick could only guess what kind of terrors Damian had lived through to make his reaction to death a stone-cold stare.</p><p>“Can. Can you see anything?” But it was Jason speaking now, and the sound was strained.</p><p>God, <em>Jason</em>. Jason had already <em>died</em> once.</p><p>He wondered if it had smelled like this back then, too.</p><p>Dick swallowed his own self-pity. He gave an experimental twist of his head, but he couldn’t shake the bag loose. “No.”</p><p>A long pause followed his answer.</p><p>“Good.”</p><p>He didn’t say anything more.</p><p>Dick had a long time to wonder exactly what he meant.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Damian mumbled sometimes, from the other side of the room. Dick couldn’t always make out what he was saying. Actually, the longer they sat there, the less sure he was that they were words at all.</p><p>“Damian?” Dick asked. “Are you still with us?”</p><p>There was a pause, and Dick’s heart caught. But then a very quiet, very tired voice answered, “Names.” The single words completely lacked Damian’s usual passion, but Dick would take it.</p><p>“I don’t think they can hear us,” he confessed.</p><p>Jason huffed—or maybe it was a sigh? It was hard to hear through the bag—and said, “You don’t think?”</p><p>Jason sounded tired, too.</p><p>For the umpteenth time, Dick tried twisting his wrists in the wires. In the three—or was it four?—days since their arrival, he had to have lost weight. But the wires were too tight, digging in practically to the bone. His fingers and toes throbbed when he tried doing exercises to keep the blood circulating.</p><p>The place where he had accidentally cut himself burned. He ignored it.</p><p>“Report,” he called.</p><p>Jason answered first. “Headache, muscle cramps. Can’t feel my hands anymore. Could use some water, too.”</p><p>Dick nodded, even knowing nobody could see it. “Damian. Report.”</p><p>It took longer for him to answer this time. “Head hurts.” And, yeah, the words were definitely slurred. Dick took a mental tally, and his blood went cold when he realized how long it had been since Damian had had anything to eat or drink.</p><p>They needed to get him out of here, or he would be joining Tim.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>
  
</p><p>There was nothing to measure the time but the rhythmic beating of his heart. It was starting to beat faster than it should at any resting rate; Dick could feel his anxiety spiking with every second spent trapped still against the chair, breathing stale air and seeing absolutely <em>nothing</em>. Whenever he decided it had been too quiet, he called out “Report!”</p><p>Sometimes it was hours between check-ins. Sometimes minutes.</p><p>Most of the time, he got an answer from Jason, though when he called it too often he got sass from the younger man. “Come on, Dick. The bat schtick doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to sleep.”</p><p>Dick didn’t think he had slept, but it was only because there was no difference between his nightmares and his reality: an endless expanse of nothingness.</p><p>The moment Tim twitched—didn’t twitch—replayed over and over again behind his eyelids.</p><p>The door opening again <em>startled </em>him. He jumped, hissing when the movement pulled at all the sore spots that had fallen asleep before: his tailbone, his back, the bottoms of his arms where they were crushed against the arms of the chair. He hadn’t realized he had been asleep, but he was rapidly waking up as he recognized only one pair of footsteps, tentatively entering the room, bringing the dull haze of a torch with it.</p><p>Too soft; too hesitant. Too alone.</p><p>Dick tracked the sound around the room, unwilling to call out to his brothers for fear it would draw attention to one of them. The cultists never went anywhere, alone. They travelled in packs.</p><p>Maybe this one was here to finally collect Tim’s body, and dump it where they had found the others.</p><p>Even as Dick thought it, the footsteps stilled. And, to Dick’s horror, bolted toward Damian.</p><p>“Leave the kid alone!”</p><p>Dick blinked. It hadn’t been him; Jason had beaten him to the punch.</p><p>The footsteps didn’t pause, immediately turning toward Dick and rushing straight past him. The smell of gasoline wafted up as he passed.</p><p>Cold dread filled him. “Wait! No!”</p><p>He tried to rock his chair, get the cultist’s attention. But he’d not eaten in days now, and he couldn’t muster the energy to move the heavy chair with his body. He yelled instead, “No! Take me, instead!”</p><p>He couldn’t hear the footsteps anymore, over the noise he was making. But he definitely heard the bone-chillingly clear call.</p><p>“Blood of the brother,” a man shouted. His voice wavered, and Dick heard him clear it before he continued.</p><p>“Now hold on a minute,” Jason spoke, calmly, clearly. “Are you sure you want to do this?”</p><p>Dick’s blood ran cold. “No!”</p><p>“And water of the womb,” the man continued, voice gaining strength. “I offer this sacrifice to be spared the tomb.”</p><p>“Wait—"</p><p>The clear sound of a dull knife, ripping through skin. Jason’s yelp was immediately cut off by a wet gurgle.</p><p>“Jason!” Dick yelled. He couldn’t feel his hands. Or his face. “You <em>fucker</em>!” he yelled. He rocked side to side in his chair, and this time with his passion was able to summon enough to tilt the chair to the side slightly.</p><p>Liquid splashed against the floor behind him, splattering onto the backs of his calves. The smell of gasoline immediately got stronger, and Dick fought the urge to freeze in his fear. “Don’t,” he begged.</p><p>Jason whispered. That was a good sign, right? That he could still speak? Dick missed what he said under the roar of the man’s chant.</p><p>“That our covenant with our sibling be bound, in the name of sacred family, found!” With the last word came a wave of heat that blasted the back of Dick’s head and shot forward through the room.</p><p>A hoarse scream rose from the space behind him. “Get it off! Get it off!” And another yell joined it, deeper and wordless.</p><p>Dick thought he screamed, too.</p><p>The chaos only continued as people rushed through the door. Shouts of “There he is!” and “Get him!” arriving with them.</p><p>Dick’s head pounded through the cacophony. He could barely keep straight of what was happening where, despite all of his bat-training. More heat entered the room, and it was almost bright enough Dick could read the words printed on the outside of the bag against the light coming through it.</p><p>“Jason!” he yelled. “Jason!”</p><p>“Cousin Sebastian, you have broken the rules of the covenant.”</p><p>“Put it out! No!”</p><p>“You cannot join our found family alone. For your sins you will be punished.”</p><p>Dick jolted in his chair when the wailing got <em>louder</em>. The sickening familiar smell of burning flesh filled his nostrils and made him gag. “Jason,” he kept calling, through watering eyes.</p><p>“PUT IT OUT!” the man behind him screamed. “HELP ME!”</p><p>Beneath that noise was a quieter whimper. Dick latched onto that. “Damian?”</p><p>“Whass happen?” Damian slurred, barely audible over the chaos of the roaring flames and the shuffling feet and the <em>screams</em> of the man—men?—burning alive in the room with them.</p><p>“It’s just. It’s just a nightmare, Damian. You’re dreaming.”</p><p>“<em>Shut. Him. Up</em>,” a deep voice commanded.</p><p>“NO! NO DON—”</p><p>The sudden absence of his pained voice was deafening. Dick shook in his seat, unable to control the tremors that wracked his body with the adrenaline that had nowhere to go. He tried clenching his fists; couldn’t feel them well enough to know whether he succeeded.</p><p>He lost time.</p><p>When he came back to himself, the extra fires in the room were gone, along with the sounds of breathing people. He swore he could still hear the screams.</p><p>He swallowed, his throat and mouth too dry for the action to soothe anything. “Report,” he asked, barely daring to hope for an answer.</p><p>He got a groan. From behind him.</p><p>Heart picking up speed, he straightened his posture. “Jason?”</p><p>“M’here.”</p><p>Hot tears sprang to Dick’s eyes. “You’re alive?”</p><p>The quiet that followed was damning. Instead, Jason reported, “Damn peanu’ missed m’ard’ry.” A tight breath. “An’m’burned.”</p><p>“Burned where?”</p><p>“Legs. Arms.”</p><p>Dick sucked in a breath. The gasoline would have caused the flames to spread fast. It’s why the other man – Sebastian – had burned to death so quickly.</p><p>Dick was tempted to ask Jason how he felt, but he knew he didn’t want the answer. “I’m sorry,” he said, instead.</p><p>A huff. More of a wheeze, really. “Don’t.”</p><p>Dick didn’t press. Jason deserved that much, at least.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>
  
</p><p>Batman had hardly been on Earth an hour when he received the call.</p><p>Witnesses had reported a light on the water, off the harbor. When authorities reached it, they found a large raft.</p><p>And twenty-seven dead bodies, still smoldering.</p><p>Batman only had to take one look at what remained of the scarlet capes to know what had happened: mass suicide.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Dick counted breaths.</p><p>Not his own, but Jason’s. They were easy enough to hear; the man wheezed and choked every few minutes. He was dying.</p><p>Dick tried to fill the silence with something other than the sound, even as he focused on it. He dredged up stories from his childhood: feeding the animals, touring the country, his parents teasing him when his growth spurt never quite kicked in. He told stories from school, too; that time he did a history project on the Gotham’s train system and stopped a train car robbery in the same week as Robin.</p><p>His voice was dry and thready; half the time he couldn’t get the words out. He mouthed them, anyway.</p><p>He was in the middle of telling a story when a piercing whine split the room.</p><p>“Damian?” he asked. The kid had been quiet for hours now, a fifty-fifty chance he would respond to any questions.</p><p>The chair across the room rattled. The crash that followed made Dick jump.</p><p>“Damian? Damian, talk to me!”</p><p>There were more sounds, like little vibrations of the wooden chair on the stone.</p><p>Jason wheezed behind him, and it took a few tries for Dick to figure out what he was saying.</p><p>“He’s seizing.”</p><p>Damian was dying.</p><p>“No. No, no no, <em>Damian</em>!” The wail that tore out of Dick’s throat was a foreign sound. “You have to hold on.”</p><p>“Dick.”</p><p>“Damian, you can’t. You can’t die, okay?”</p><p>“<em>Dick</em>.”</p><p>“We made a promise!” Dick shouted. “We promised we wouldn’t leave you. You can’t. . . you aren’t allowed to leave us!”</p><p>“DICK!”</p><p>“What?” He wielded all of his misery and pain in the word, making it sharp, and immediately regretted it.</p><p>“Calm down.” Jason was used to it, though, wasn’t he? He returned Dick’s sharp words with something bitter of his own. “Nothin’ we can do ‘bout it.”</p><p>Pulling at the restraints was subconscious, now. Dick could hardly feel it. “I can’t. <em>Damian</em>.”</p><p>There was a painful-sounding smirk from behind him. “You gonna be like this whe’I’m gone?”</p><p>Dick’s breath caught. “Don’t say that.”</p><p>“You know—”</p><p>“Shut your <em>fucking </em>mouth, Jason. You don’t get to say that.”</p><p>“Lemme. Lemme finish.”</p><p>Jason was having an even harder time breathing now. Infection was a bitch like that. Dick closed his eyes. He was too dehydrated to cry. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“Don’t.” Jason had to breathe between each phrase. “’M sorry.”</p><p>Dick bowed his head. He had nothing to stifle his sobs with. “You don’t have to be.”</p><p>“Yanno? Yer a decent brother. I wish. . . I wish. . . “ Jason choked.</p><p>Dick waited a full five seconds before interjecting. “Jason?”</p><p>Jason wheezed. It was a terribly familiar sound.</p><p>Dick had to do the talking. “We all love you. Bruce, too. Please,” Dick choked on tears that weren’t there. “I’m sorry it has to end like this.”</p><p>He had a clear memory of Jason in his mind, from a week ago. Jason had smirked at him over a plate of Alfred’s cookies. Dick pictures <em>that </em>Jason, could imagine him quipping, <em>“Been worse.</em>”</p><p>The Jason in reality was silent.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Bruce couldn’t feel his hand where it connected with the criminal’s face anymore. He thought he felt a knuckle pop, but it was hardly a blip on his radar.</p><p>He pulled the criminal so closely to his face he could feel his ragged breath against his jaw. “I will give you one more chance.” He twisted the collar of the man’s shirt tighter, getting a deep pleasure from the way the man gagged against the feeling.</p><p>Despite his gasps for air, the man <em>smiled</em>. The teeth that were still intact were coated in blood. “They are sacrifices for our family,” he sang in a dry voice. “They have already been rescued.”</p><p>“Your family is dead!” He shook the man again, hard enough to give him whiplash. The bastard was the only surviving member Bruce could track down. And even then, it may not have been enough. The rage inside of Bruce crested, and he screamed at the man as loudly as he could. “<em>Where are my sons</em>?”</p><p>A thick glob of blood dribbled from the man’s slack mouth. It landed on the bat emblem on Bruce’s chest. “They’re going to die.”</p><p>Bruce flung the man backward into the stone wall behind him. The man’s head bounced off the stone, but Bruce couldn’t find it in himself to care. He stalked up to him again and wrapped his hands around the man’s throat. “You are going to tell me where you have taken my sons, or you are going to spend the rest of your life in a body cast.”</p><p>The man sputtered, his eyes going bloodshot. “I will join the rest of my family,” he managed to wheeze.</p><p>He fell limp in Bruce’s hands.</p><p>Bruce stepped back, the change in posture enough to surprise him.</p><p>A thick pink foam dribbled out of the man’s mouth.</p><p>“No.” Bruce lifted the man’s chin. His eyes were glazed over already, even as the rest of his body seized with the poisoning. Bruce helped him slide to the ground, supporting his head. “No.”</p><p>He could do nothing but watch, helpless, as the cyanide ran its course. In seconds, the man stopped twitching.</p><p>He was dead.</p><p>And with him, any chance of finding his sons died, too.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>
  
</p><p>Dick’s head was pounding so loudly, he didn’t recognize the sound of footsteps at first. When he did hear them, he lifted his head sluggishly, though it did him no good. He could only smell his own breath, see complete darkness, under the bag.</p><p>Moving was a bad idea. He dropped his head again, until his chin fell back into the bruise he had dug into his own chest. It hurt, but not as badly as his legs. Or his shoulders. Or his chest.</p><p>All of it hurt, really.</p><p>He hadn’t moved in almost a week. His skin stung where he had struggled against it, each cut a bitter reminder of the days past. He itched, where his urine and sweat had dried in his pants. Parts of his body were numb from having pressure on them too long; his hands and feet had had no feeling in days, now.</p><p>His mouth was dry to the point his lips had cracked, and he could taste blood every time he moved them to call out. “Report,” he rasped, voice barely rising above a whisper despite his greatest effort.</p><p>Nobody heard him.</p><p>At least. Nobody answered him.</p><p>They hadn’t answered him in days.</p><p>Dick flinched when he heard the door swing open, the unoiled hinges squealing like nails on a chalkboard. The shudder that ran through his body in reaction physically exhausted him. Still, he tried to lick his lips—his tongue felt like sandpaper in his mouth—and clear his throat. “Report,” he repeated.</p><p>Nobody answered him.</p><p>They should have woken up when the door opened. Surely it was loud enough. He needed to know they were okay.</p><p>“Re—”</p><p>His word fell away in a hiss as the bag was lifted off his head. The burlap had dried into the scabs over the cuts in his face and scalp. As the bag was lifted it was replaced by an intense white light that burned his retinas. Dick didn’t have the energy to move his head, but he squeezed his eyes shut with all of his willpower. “Please,” he mouthed, unable to get sound out anymore.</p><p>“Dick.”</p><p>The voice was too loud, too close. Dick rocked his head side to side the best he could, even though it made the pounding worse. Please.</p><p>“It’s me, it’s your dad.” The voice was softer this time, pitched higher. The light got dimmer as the flashlight was pointed away from his face. “Please, look at me.”</p><p>When the words sank in, he desperately <em>wanted </em>to follow the instructions. But he couldn’t do more than tilt his head a few inches back before an intense cramp pulled in his neck, and with a sharp breath he dropped his chin again. “Bruss,” he breathed. It was the best he could do.</p><p>A large hand landed on top of his, where it was tied tightly to the arm of the chair with piano wire. Dick couldn’t feel his fingers anymore, but he definitely felt it when the wires were picked out of the deep, blood-crusted cuts they had left in his wrists. Something larger, softer, was tied tightly around his wrists closer to his elbow, and then suddenly the sharp pressure in his wrists was relieved.</p><p>His fingers were grey.</p><p>He heaved when the smell hit him. There was hardly anything left for him to spit up, dehydrated as he was, but he managed to spit a thin string of bile into his numb lap.</p><p>Bruce hushed him, already working at loosening the wires holding his chest to the back of the chair. Every slight jostle of the wires sent waves of sharp pain through him, but he couldn’t even muster the energy to react. Wounded sounds made their way from his throat when Bruce braced him with one arm and the wires fell away completely.</p><p>Dick fell forward. A marionette with cut strings.</p><p>He lost a few seconds, his world fading to black. But when he came back Bruce had ducked down and caught him under his armpits. He was whispering a litany of promises to him. “Shh. It’s okay. I’m here now, I’ve got you.”</p><p>His eyelids kept falling shut. He opened them again, dutifully, each time. It got a little harder with each try. “Report,” he slurred, the word barely recognizable to his own ears.</p><p>Bruce angled himself so he could work at the wires around Dick’s legs. (Dick didn’t have to look to know his toes, at least, were dead-dead, too. They had throbbed when blood started to pool in them, but they’d been numb for days since.) From his angle, head propped up on Bruce’s shoulder, Dick could catch glimpses of the rest of the room.</p><p>He gagged again. Nothing came up.</p><p>It was dim, but not black like it had been under the hood. He could clearly make out the shapes of his brothers, in the exact spots he had last seen them before the hood had been lowered over his head.</p><p>He tried to raise his head toward Damian. Failed. “Report,” he whispered.</p><p>The small figure was completely still. He didn’t so much as <em>twitch </em>at the words.</p><p>“’Am’an,” he tried. “Report. Jas’n—”</p><p>Bruce rubbed a warm hand down his back and hushed him. “Don’t try to talk.”</p><p>There were new tourniquets around Dick’s legs, made with something much softer but equally constricting. With a dull sense of panic, he realized it meant he would need amputation.</p><p>But that feeling was quickly replaced with a worse one. As Bruce stood, he turned, giving Dick a perfect view of the entire room.</p><p>The charred remains of Tim’s body on the stone table, his dried blood still caked into the cracks.</p><p>Damian’s still form before him, his frame limp and stiff in the tipped chair.</p><p>Jason, slumped over in his chair. His body unrecognizable.</p><p>There was a hole in his hood, just in line with one of his eyes.</p><p>Bruce was saying something to him, but Dick couldn’t hear it.</p><p>The sharp pinch in his elbow barely registered. He was already falling into the darkness.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>If you made it this far, you need to put your internet down and go hug your pet, soak in the sun, or eat some sweets. Then read some fluffy fics. Doctor's orders.<br/>Happy Halloween! &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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